The Thing About Marshall Henderson...

Marshall Henderson can leave you with mixed emotions, even within the course of the game. "Shoot it!" we scream. Four misses later: "Don't shoot it!!!"  But when all is said and done, Ole Miss fans for the most part realize Henderson is the reason the Rebels won an SEC Tournament Championship and made it to the 2nd round of the NCAA last season. That's why most of us have learned, like Andy Kennedy, to just take what Henderson gives and be thankful, and try to forget all the shots that clang off the rim in the process. With Henderson, every miss is a potential make....so just keep shooting. He happily obliges every time. 

CBS columnist Gary Parrish came to grips with the Henderson reality yesterday in a good column:

It's well-established that Henderson will both take and make ridiculous shots.So people watch when he plays and incessantly tweet the good and bad. 

Truth be told, there's often more bad than good -- evidence being Henderson's lackluster career field-goal percentage, not to mention the four shots he missed in a span of 54 seconds in the final two minutes of regulation on Sunday. Those misses had the students seated directly behind me yelling at and pleading with Henderson to stop shooting, and Ole Miss was down 86-80 with 39 seconds remaining. It was bad. But then, out of nowhere, Henderson sank two 3-pointers in a span of 19 seconds and served as something of a decoy on the inbounds play that allowed Jarvis Summers to make a 3-pointer with less than a second remaining in regulation to tie the score and force overtime. It was terrific. 

And that will forever be the issue with Henderson. He will shoot Ole Miss out of some games. He will shoot Ole Miss into some games. Either way, he's going to shoot.

Kennedy knows exactly what he's getting each time he sends Marshall out on the floor:

"The only way to stop him from shooting is to sit him down, and I've tried that a few times here and there, and I'll continue to try that," Kennedy said. "But he's a volume guy; he's been a volume guy since Day 1, and he was a volume guy when I recruited him. I realized that. So I just try to put him in a position where he can help our team, and he's certainly done that." 

Yes, Henderson certainly has helped Ole Miss' team. There's some bad sprinkled in, sure. But there's also a lot of good, which is something I'm reminded of each time I see Kennedy's SEC tournament championship ring that Henderson helped win last March.